India working towards disposing pending patent applications in the next two years

Minister for Commerce and Industry, under which the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) functions, has been taking several initiatives for substantive improvement of IP environment in India. The recent initiatives include comprehensive National IPR policy, relocation of Copyright Office to DIPP, merger of the Copyright Board with the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB), establishment of Cell for IPR Promotion and Management (CIPAM) and launch of Start-up Intellectual Property Protection (SIPP) scheme, among others.

Adding to the above initiatives, the office of Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks (CGPDTM) is making efforts to clear the backlog of about 2.3 lakh pending patent applications. DIPP has hired substantial number of examiners and is likely to dispose these pending applications in next two years. The introduction of expedited examination and the recruitment of around 450 patent examiners to add to the pool of existing 130 examiners at the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) is witness to such efforts of the DIPP. This recruitment has increased the speedy disposal of pending patent applications. In the year 2016-17, about 9,847 patents were granted by the IPO, as against 6,326 in the previous year. IPO has improved its count in issuance of examination reports, which has increased to 6,000 patent applications a month from the earlier 1,500 applications.

Suresh Prabhu, Minister for Commerce and Industry, while addressing the Leadership Summit on Anti-Counterfeiting and Brand Protection at New Delhi last month, highlighted the efforts and initiatives of DIPP and IPO to dispose off the pending applications at the earliest. He announced that the Ministry is working to come up with an effective plan by which patent applications will be disposed in the least possible time. These initiatives are expected to bring down the pendency of patent applications and targeted at final disposal of patent applications from the present 5-7 years to less than 18 months.

We welcome the initiatives and efforts of the ministry in establishing a strong IP regime, and more importantly a time bound one, which is likely to boost innovation in the country.

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